| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: assay gold at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope,
are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of the
population; and of these the Government takes one-third, puts them in
sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up together for three years.
Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive
power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive
appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they
are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade
to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the
youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with
knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: stationed themselves at the corners of the cross-ways. They declaimed
against the Ancients and against Hamilcar, predicted complete ruin to
the people, and invited them to universal destruction and license. The
most dangerous were the henbane-drinkers; in their crisis they
believed themselves wild beasts, and leaped upon the passers-by to
rend them. Mobs formed around them, and the defence of Carthage was
forgotten. The Suffet devised the payment of others to support his
policy.
In order to retain the genius of the gods within the town their images
had been covered with chains. Black veils were placed upon the Pataec
gods, and hair-cloths around the altars; and attempts were made to
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated
the dense surface of his self-absorption. Was it possible that
her old beast of an aunt had actually cut her off? That she was
living alone like this because there was no one else for her to
go to, and that she really hadn't more than enough to keep alive
on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The fibres of
sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings
might mean--and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous
perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might
serve him.
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